Categories
Cruise Blog From The Editor

Running At Sea: An Odd Way To Stay Shipshape

Yes, I actually exercised on my last cruise. Now that we’ve gotten that bombshell out of the way, we can move onto talking about one of the strangest sensations at sea: running.

Personally, I prefer to run on a dedicated track or trail rather than a treadmill. For me, there’s something about physically traveling a specific distance that motivates me and gives me the boost I need to go on. In the past I’ve only run around my university’s campus, so I already knew running around the deck of a cruise ship would be odd. Little did I know how odd it would be.

The strangeness of it all began when I left my stateroom in my running shorts, running shoes, an FAU t-shirt, and an iPhone strapped to my arm. This isn’t the look a typical cruise passenger rocks at sea, so it wasn’t a shocker that I got some weird looks from the crew and fellow guests while walking to the upper decks. Next came the stairs. I’m not quitter and I wasn’t about to take an elevator to my workout. This turned out to be a big mistake as I was winded by the time I had finished climbing the 9 decks to the track. Finally, after an adventurous journey to the track, it was time to get moving.

As I began my run, I felt confident in myself and felt good running alongside the sea. I was relaxed and moving at a great pace. Suddenly, I rounded the corner and ran into what felt like a brick wall, but was really the wind blowing from the ocean. I had apparently been running into the wind on the starboard side, but didn’t even think about the potential slowdown that awaited me on the port side. Eventually I powered through, but I had lost a bit of energy. As you can imagine, this pattern of bursts of energy and windy slowdowns continued for numerous laps. Finally, I reached around two miles and threw in the towel. I had performed slightly worse than usual, chalking it up to the addition of ocean winds and running on a steel surface. I felt good though and was happy to have run off a few of the calories I no doubtfully gained earlier in the day.

Was running at sea good for me? Yes. Was it as easy as I have experienced on land? No. Will I continue running at sea? Maybe. In all honesty, I think the stairs onboard gave me more of a workout than running.

Comments

comments

By Mike Faust

Mike Faust is an avid world traveler, often found traversing city streets in Asia and Europe rather than his home city of Boca Raton. Mike has touched down in 39 countries, set sail on 35 cruises, and flown over 400,000 lifetime miles.

One reply on “Running At Sea: An Odd Way To Stay Shipshape”

I ran all through my 20s and 30s….much of those runs on the helicopter flight deck of US Navy destroyers and frigates. The norm averaged nine laps = 1 mile. And, of course, we were running on special, helicopter-grabbing non-skid rough material. If you fell, your knees were toast. These destroyers and frigates averaged around 10,000 tons — about 10% of the size of today’s cruise ships….so we definitely did some rock ‘n rolling. Running was a definite challenge! And, with all that running in tight circles, we had to agree that runners would go clockwise on certain days of the week….and counter-clockwise on other days…..otherwise, we’d all end up lopsided! But I found getting away from the stress of 18-hour/7 days a week work…..getting out in the sea air….working up a good sweat…..watching the waves and listening to the sea….was better than any drug or alcohol could ever be for relaxing and rejuvenating!

PS — I usually ran 5 miles per day around 5 times a week. That comes to 45 laps around the flight deck for a day’s run. Of course, my runs were often interrupted, delayed or cancelled by an incoming helicopter!

Comments are closed.